


A Quiet Unraveling

by volcanicpanic



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, some sort of character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volcanicpanic/pseuds/volcanicpanic
Summary: L is dead. Mello is gone. You’re still Matt.You are the leftovers of a failed experiment. Roger cared as much as any project facilitator could, but his job was to train the successor to L. Without an ending to justify the means he was just overseeing an orphanage of neurotic adderall addicts.
Relationships: Matt | Mail Jeevas/Mello | Mihael Keehl
Kudos: 15





	A Quiet Unraveling

You are Matt.

You were a runaway, a menace, and then a Wammy’s kid.

You still are a Wammy’s kid, you suppose, if that means anything anymore.

L is dead. Mello is gone. You’re still Matt. 

You are the leftovers of a failed experiment. Your classes are all canceled and replaced with independent projects. That you would be expected to create work for yourself and then do it is laughable. Roger doesn't know what to do. He's capable enough to advise and schedule classes. He was able to shift the entire curriculum mid-year to lessons focused on the Kira investigation. Your coursework turned to Japanese law, philosophy of the death penalty, and an unending consumption of statistics. Roger cared as much as any project facilitator could, but his job was to train the successor to L. Without an ending to justify the means he was just overseeing an orphanage of neurotic adderall addicts. _Maybe you'll start training to be the next Near. Mello would love that._

The day after L dies, there are less people in the dining hall. The next day even fewer. Your peers gauge the room the same as you, trying to predict the point that they will be expected to leave. Towards the end of the week Wammy’s is empty enough that you each sit at your own table, distant to maintain the illusion of invulnerability. 

It was infuriating watching people go. Mello, of course, was the first to leave. He left even before the meeting to follow up the announcement of L’s death. _Probably before L’s body was even cold._

Despite the unspoken agreement not to, it seems all of your peers have established connections in the outside world. You watch them from the lawn as they get in cars and leave like there was never a barrier between Wammy’s House and the real world. You’ve been cheated, you realize. _We were all supposed to be isolated together._

You decide not to leave. Maybe never leave. To imprison Roger like you were imprisoned. You know this is unfair. You would probably be dead if you weren’t brought here. 

You stop going to the dining hall. 

Your meds ran out days ago, and nobody's dropped off new ones. Your migraines get bad again.

In another life you cried in the nurse's arms, on the day you moved into Wammy’s House. She patiently brushed your hair from your sweaty forehead and waited until all the stress and fear of the day turned to exhaustion. You dry heaved over a plastic bin while she reassured you that, _no, you don't have to go back home. No, you aren't going to juvenile detention._

Seeing her now makes you uncomfortable. She's nice enough, but she's seen the nervous animal version of you that you'd like to pretend never happened. You wonder if she ever stopped seeing you as an object of pity. 

Mello pitied you. He didn't pretend not to. When you were absent for too many classes he would bring food, work, chastise you for dropping in placement. Sometimes in class you could catch him looking from across the room. You used to be intimidated before you became used to seeing him this way. Maybe if you didn't occupy so much of his time he would've been L's successor. 

You never could understand your relationship with Mello. It wasn't something that you could disassemble, examine the components of, and put back together. Mello was a polarizing figure at Wammy’s. He was overserious, intense, volatile. He was abrasive. He was magnetic. When he bestowed upon you proximity above others you felt special. You knew the version of Mello who got tipsy off of bottom shelf vodka in your dorm, the version who cried quiet frustrated tears when he worked twice as hard, slept half as long, and still fell second to Near. 

You think of the small crucifix that used to hang above his bed, a wooden cross with a simple bronze figure. You used to stare up at it, your head in his lap while he revised class notes. He would run his fingers along the shell of your ear and you would close your eyes and wonder how he reconciled the existence of Kira with God. 

Was it disgraceful for somebody to play his role or were they just expediting the process of judgement and damnation? When God promised to never again flood the Earth did he mean never again to the destruction, or that next time it would not be a flood? You never ask. 

You had to tread lightly with Mello sometimes. Not because he was delicate but because he was wrathful. When you were both younger, you asked him something stupid and clumsy about the rapture, and without responding or looking at you he closed his notebook and left the library. For the next month he cut you from his life as easily as it was to not water a houseplant. He looked beyond you like nothing stood before him, like he couldn’t see your despair. And then one day, things were normal again. No questions, no answers. Old testament shit. 

He kissed you once. There was no warning or build up. You were both sitting cross legged on his bed. He was reading and you were not. You were looking at the way his eyelashes shone like rutile in the sunlight. He could tell you were watching him, hadn’t turned a page in minutes, and when he glanced up at you you held his gaze, rebellious. He leaned in for a peck which was over too quickly to register. So quick that if he told you you imagined it you would believe him. He returned to his reading and you timidly returned to minesweeper. That night you dreamt about angels. 

Your cache of hoarded food is running low. You haven’t seen another person in days, haven’t even unclenched your jaw in days. The thought of being caught outside your dorm, being seen, makes your breath shallow and skin clammy. Your late night cafeteria raid winds you up to the point of sickness. You would vomit if you had anything in your stomach to give. 

You used to climb on top of your wardrobe and crouch beneath the ceiling to smoke though your narrow dorm window. Mello once commented that your weird gargoyle cigarette routine made you look like L. You smiled when he said this but you never got a good look at L when he visited, so you cannot judge its accuracy.

He didn't like when you smoked. He saw it as a forfeiture. _How're you going to catch Kira if you can't even walk up stairs without being winded?_ It was flattering that in the hypothetical Mello despised your self sabotage more than the fact that you were the new L. 

Now it's an achievement if you bother sitting up in bed before lighting up. Miserably, you ash your cigarette over a dirty plate on the floor and you wonder how unlivable you can make this space before someone notices and shows concern. The version of you who seeks comfort is at odds with the version of you who has been trained to hide weakness. _Are you really this pathetic, Mattie?_

The next few days are full of the unique half-sleep that forms when you expend zero energy. You rest, you are awake, you stare at the ceiling, you will yourself back to sleep. In the early morning you hear a hushed argument in the hallway. You wonder who it is, what it’s about. In your dreams Mello comes back to you. Offers you the head of Kira. You wake up to the sound of rushing blood in your ears.

When you are in good health, when you take your medicine and sleep at the right times and eat the right foods and drink enough water, your headaches usually aren’t so bad, but now you have forsaken your body and are being punished. Daylight is an icepick in your head. The pulse behind your eye is slow, rhythmic, and driving you insane. It quickens when you sit up and for a moment static covers your field of vision. The blindness dissipates and you fumble with the buttons of your stereo. You’re so uncoordinated this almost feels like a little show you’re putting on for yourself. You are returning to the living after stasis. 

The music feels awful but drowns out the throbbing, it is the first stimulation you’ve absorbed since L died, since Mello left. The distraction is invigorating. With more clarity, you fiddle with the settings, increasing the bass until the air becomes more vibration than sound. Increasing the volume until your vision blurs with the melody. You lay back down now, swirling thoughts too shaken to maintain form.

If anybody knocks on your door, you do not notice.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the fact that i havent hung out with anyone irl in 2 months (thanks covid) lets not read into that
> 
> epilogue: matt works as a mechanic for a little while and buys a houseboat off craigslist. he learns to enjoy being alone with himself


End file.
